http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
WILL HE OR WON'T HE? Republican activists are wondering what Pat Buchanan
will do -- remain within the Republican Party or chase the very tempting
vision of the Reform Party nomination.

The Reform Party is no longer the pet project of a bored billionaire. It is
now the pet project of any number of has-beens. The crop of candidates
chosen by Reform Party members in a political beauty contest included Ross
Perot (22 percent), Donald Trump (21 percent), Pat Choate (17 percent) and
Pat Buchanan (8 percent). Also on the list of potential candidates were
radical activist Lenora Fulani and former Connecticut Sen. Lowell Weicker.

Gov. Jesse Ventura is the exception. Though certainly flamboyant enough to
upstage even Ross the Boss, he is a bona fide governor running a real state
now and, as such, he has more credibility and political potential than the
rest.

But Ventura doesn't want to run for president (more evidence of his
refreshing sanity). He's backing Lowell Weicker (can't win 'em all) and all
indications are that he and Perot are struggling for control of the party.
If Perot were to back Buchanan, there'd be a horse race.

Thanks to the fine work of campaign reformers of yesteryear, whoever gets
the Reform nomination will have $12.6 million in taxpayer dollars to spend
in the general election. Many members of the Reform Party are social
liberals, but Buchanan has a huge mailing list of supporters who might be
very willing to become Reform Party members if that's what it takes to give
their man a platform. (Though it remains uncertain at this time whether the
Reform candidate would participate in the presidential debates.)

What about content? To his by now familiar blend of protectionism,
opposition to immigration and isolationist foreign policy (he prefers to
call it America First, not minding the historical connotations), Buchanan
has added a few new items. He is appalled that half of the Ivy League's
students are of Jewish or Asian ancestry and would demand that America's
elite universities set aside 75 percent of their places for "non-Jewish
whites."

Such a posture undermines the principled case that conservatives have been
making for 20 years against affirmative action. Rather than relying upon
merit and judging people as individuals rather than as members of groups
(oppressed or otherwise), Buchanan frames the entire question as one of
group entitlement. He is clearly in favor of quotas -- for Christian whites.
If politics degenerates into a fight merely about who gets what, with
principle utterly abandoned, politics is entirely debased.

Buchanan

Reform party members probably won't mind Buchanan's passionate
protectionism -- they last endorsed a candidate who predicted that NAFTA
would spell ruin. But Buchanan's heavy breathing about nefarious foreigners
is unlikely to sell well so long as the economy remains strong.

GOP chairman Jim Nicholson will advise Buchanan when they meet next month
that "he has a future in the Republican Party." Buchanan is too smart to
fall for such blandishments. If Nicholson wants to be effective in
dissuading Buchanan, he must set before him certain facts. First, there is
no doubt that virtually all of Buchanan's support would come at the expense
of the Republican nominee. A recent Gallop poll found that if the race
consisted of George W. Bush, Al Gore and Pat Buchanan, Bush would win, but
by a very slim margin.

GOP activist Grover Norquist presents the hard political logic as follows:
There are only two possible outcomes of a Buchanan third party run. Either
he runs a terrific campaign and succeeds in getting lots of votes, in which
case Al Gore gets to appoint all federal judges probably including two
Supreme Court justices over the next four years, or Buchanan gets very few
votes, in which case the victorious George W. Bush concludes that
conservatives are not all they're cracked up to be. Both outcomes would
damage causes (abortion, crime, multiculturalism) that Buchanan professes to
care deeply about.

Buchanan may believe that there is a third alternative: that he wins the
presidency. But for someone whose negatives ran up to 57 percent last time
around, it is folly to imagine that outcome. Buchanan's decision will reveal
which is more important -- his own ego, or the causes he
espouses.

JWR contributor Mona Charen reads all of her mail. Let her know what you think by clicking here. Please bear in mind, though, that while all letters are read, due to the heavy amount of traffic, not all letters can be answered.